2019 came and went without the slightest romantic endeavors for me. Last year on New Year’s Eve, I spent the whole day alone, saging my home, creating vision boards and finishing the last 50 pages of my book list. It’s exactly what I planned and what I wanted at that point in my life.
However I learned that the old saying of “how you spend New Year’s Eve is how you’ll spend the rest of your year” kinda comes true. I started off alone and stayed alone. 2019: the year of just me!
More or less for the first time in my adult life, I went a year without any romantic connection. No casual flirtation with a friend of a friend, no back and forth texting after a date, and most definitely no physical attention. Besides this sounding a little pitiful, what the year mostly was with the absence of romance, was boring.
So over the holidays I mapped out my 2020 intentions, holding myself up to a higher bar to continue spending the year focusing on myself, career and health; while also with the goal of intentionally making more human connections (hoping some would be romantic ones). Crazy enough, I fell right into the pattern I wanted.
2020 came in with a bang! On New Year’s Eve, during the day I had a coffee date with a blast from the past. We talked for almost four hours. It was intellectually stimulating, wholesome and very cute — the perfect amount of flirtation to get me back in the game.
Later that evening and much different from exactly one year previously, I had three parties to attend. I spent the evening with my best friends and new friends; the human connection part of me that had been malnourished was filling up so nicely. At our final party of the night at a museum, with art, music and very interesting looking people.
I ran into a guy I’ve known for a while. One of those guys that weaves in and out of your 20’s. At midnight with a room full of people, he kissed me on the cheek. I went home with him that night and continued to text him up until quite recently. Along with the coffee date, a friend of a friend’s brother, an old coworker, a guy I met while visiting NYC, etc. You get the point. I went from famine to feast in the romantic arena.
For me, 2020 started off being romantic, spontaneous and trusting of my fate — three things COVID-19 does not go well with. For the first two months of the year, I broke out of my shell and though it has been very fun, the timing of this very daunting, dystopian-type world virus has given me some control back over my whole laissez-faire approach to gaining more romance.
You never want to be tested positive at the doctors, but can you imagine being tested positive for COVID-19 from a kiss at a concert? I don’t want to have to make that call to my last sexual partner saying, “I may have passed on Coronavirus,” which naturally would inflict end of the world feelings.
So for now I’ll take on this virus not as a panic, but as a time to take a breath. And reflect on how I have and how I will approach adding romance into my life.
